Over the next decade, most devices connected to the Internet or other global network will not be used by people in the familiar way that personal computers, tablets and smart phones are. Billions of interconnected devices will be monitoring the environment, structures, transportation systems, factories, farms, forests, utilities, soil and weather conditions, oceans and resources. Many of these sensors and actuators will be networked into autonomous sets, with much of the information being exchanged machine-to-machine directly and without human involvement
Machine-to-machine communications are typically terse. Most sensors and actuators will report or act upon small pieces of information—“chirps.” Burdening these devices with current network protocol stacks is inefficient, unnecessary and unduly increases their cost of ownership.
The architecture of the Internet of Things necessarily entails a widely distributed topology incorporating simpler chirp protocols towards at the edges of the network. Intermediate network elements perform information propagation, manage broadcasts, and provide protocol translation. Another class of devices house integrator functions providing higher-level analysis, for both near-edge analytics and broader-scope analysis. Small chirp data will feed “big data” systems.
The propagation of pollen and the interaction of social insects are relevant to the emerging architecture of the Internet of Things described in the instant application. Pollen is lightweight by nature, to improve its reach. It is inherently secure, only the receiver can decode its message. Nature's design is very different from today's traditional large packet and sender-oriented network traffic.
This application describes reasons why we must rethink current approaches to the Internet of Things. Appropriate architectures are described that will coexist with existing incumbent networking protocols. An architecture comprised of integrator functions, propagator nodes, and end devices, along with their interactions, is explored. Example applications are used to illustrate concepts and draw on lessons learned from Nature.